Ponderosa Pine, NM
Ponderosa Pine wildfire risk explained
USFS scores Ponderosa Pine at the 97th national percentile for wildfire risk to structures (in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally), a figure built from 755 real buildings rather than raw vegetation cover. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Fire likelihood alone (USFS's burn-probability figure) ranks Ponderosa Pine at the 96th national percentile — 2 points below its risk-to-structures score, a gap driven by how much is actually built there.
Where Ponderosa Pine's buildings actually sit
Of Ponderosa Pine's 755 counted buildings, 100% carry Direct exposure and only 0% carry Minimal — a lopsided split that puts defensible-space clearing ahead of vents or roofing as the intervention worth doing first.
How Ponderosa Pine compares
Ponderosa Pine scores 97th nationally and 91st within New Mexico — close enough that its state context doesn't change the picture the national number already gives. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Ponderosa Pine ranks 950 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 14,066 by building count (1 is largest). Within New Mexico alone, it ranks 48 of 495 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for New Mexico on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Ponderosa Pine
Ponderosa Pine's 97th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
Ponderosa Pine's 100% Direct-exposure share means lot clearing around the structure typically outweighs any single material upgrade here. The home-hardening guide ranks the options for a place shaped like this.
Where Ponderosa Pine's figures come from
Ponderosa Pine's 97th-percentile score and its burn-probability figure both come from the same USFS workbook, documented in the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Ponderosa Pine's dominant direct exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.